[Vorbis] A Macromedia Shockwave Flash-based Ogg player?
Chris Harrington (Personal)
webkid at webkid.com
Mon Jan 15 22:29:43 PST 2007
Ian Malone wrote:
> Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
>> So, why is it that it took YouTube to make Internet video a reality?
>>
>> Zero install.
>>
>
> Not zero, but a lot of people had Flash.
> [...]
>
> The question is how does Flash get onto machines? It doesn't come
> bundled with Windows or Linux, don't know about the Mac, so people
> are still downloading it. Maybe target the Google download package?
>
Most (really, all) modern browsers recommend a download when they
stumble upon a flash embed for the first time. Internet Explorer and
Firefox both do. I just installed Windows 2000 on Parallels, got
Firefox, and it prompted me to do an automatic install of Adobe flash.
It was nice; "You need a plugin." "OK." "Click here and say you agree."
"OK, I agree." "I'm done! Look at the flashing stuff!" "Ooo, nice."
Oh, let me just say that anyone who says that we should be targeting a
Firefox plugin as a direct Ogg Vorbis codec is missing the point. That
kind of thing is already available (VLC provides an open source plugin
of that nature, for example). The point is to target a piece of software
that is nearly ubiquitous among internet users and tojan horse the codec
onto their machine.
Once people start using Ogg Vorbis, and especially once they *aren't
aware of it*, it'll become much more widespread. The fact that someone
must know what format their music is forms the very basic problem that
we have today; users don't want to have to take a class or read a book
to listen to music. Do you realize that some people (well, a lot of
people) use Windows Media player to rip their CDs to 64k WMA files? Why?
Because it's already their on their Windows computer. They've been using
that the whole time, why should they care?
Education is a wonderful fantasy, but it's 10% at best. The other 90% is
showing people that it's already part of their daily lives and they
don't even know it (ala MP3).
-Chris
More information about the Vorbis
mailing list